Sr. Director of Product Marketing

Position Summary/Objective 

The Sr. Director, Product Marketing is responsible for synthesizing market, customer, product and competitive inputs to create messaging and influence the product roadmap, towards driving the highest possible revenue for the business.  He/She will support the go-to-market strategy for all products by generating product messaging, defining and aligning buyer personas with campaigns and sales messages, and positioning market and competitive analysis to support overall effectiveness of marketing and sales enablelement. Growing our market share for core products, along with successfully launching new products, as well as identifying new market segments are channels by which the Product Marketing function will help the business rapidly increase market share.  The Director Product Marketing will have a strong background in understanding our products and translating that into messaging, collateral, and campaigns based on buyer persona profiles and the buyer journey.  

 The Sr. Director, Product Marketing reports to the SVP Marketing. 

Essential Functions/Duties/Responsibilities  

• Collaborate with Marketing, Sales and Product leaders to ensure our products are positioned in line with the values and outcomes of our customers, prospects and partners and exemplify the company’s vision and mission, while differentiating from our competitors.  

• Lead the team in creating data-driven, solution and product positioning and messaging  

• Deliver market and competitive research that supports new product development and existing product improvement. 

• Search and screen new opportunity areas by analyzing company products/services, customer requirements, workflows, market trends and competitive gaps  

• Facilitate market research approach, methodology and integration of findings into product marketing department driving the organizations’ go-to-market approach  

• Research competitors to stay current with similar products or services on the market and create differentiated positioning and messaging  

• Disseminate the results across the marketing and sales department to drive the right communications with the market  

• Partner with Product Management team to corroborate and align on competitive threats, opportunities, and POV. 

• Be a product expert when it relates to market position, value messaging, competitive positioning:  

• Identify the values and buying habits of target customers working with external and internal data 

• Collaborate with Corporate Communications and Demand Generation to present new and existing product information at customer forums to gain insight and feedback  

• Assist in identifying potential internal and external speakers for webinars, or other forums to help build credibility for our products 

• Align with Product Management to ensure alignment on planned new products or product changes: 

• Coordinate with Revenue Marketing, and across the entire Marketing team, to launch all new products; deliver new product messaging and positioning.  

• Ensure team representation at all product management new product project meetings; identify and assign marketing launch activities required to support new product introduction. 

• Create a mechanism for bidirectional feedback to influence the product roadmap and strategic product decisions. 

• Develop a strong and collaborative working relationship with the Sr. Director, Revenue Marketing to: 

• Revise content based on feedback when positioning and messaging are not meeting defined targets.  

• Update current product collateral based on suggestions and recommendations from analytics tools, such as Conductor, as well as feedback from Marketing peers 

• Align on messaging requirements for different buyer personas and stages 

• Maintain and develop all content directly associated with products to include, but not limited to, press releases (existing and new products), data sheets, sales presentations, videos, blogs and white papers; collaborate with demand/lead generation as needed to fully deliver final content. 

• Maintain a content taxonomy by product with mapping to buyer personas and the buyer content journey. 

• Establish a cadence for updating product content, ensuring all content repositories and stakeholders for the content are notified. 

• Partner with Sales, Sales Operations and Demand Generation to ensure clarity and alignment on product content and messaging. 

• Conduct win/loss reviews for core products to ensure messaging and strategy is adjusted, and support revision to sales enablement content. 

• Collaborate with Global Marketing to identify gaps in market content and messaging based on delivered campaigns  

• Serve as a key partner to Sales Operations to support an effective sales enablement program. 

• Collaborate with business SMEs. Sales Operations and Solution Consultants to update sales materials 

• Collaborate with Sales Enablement to provide needed content and messaging to support sales training 

• Serve as a “go to” resource for sales on product positioning 

• Support sales and marketing through sales tools, training and market expertise to ensure their ability to effectively position and sell products  

• Work with the sales enablement team to train sales on how to speak to our customers, prospects and partners  

• Establish and drive team-wide utilization of a standard messaging framework. 

• Create consistency of formatting and process of distribution for messaging by product, solution, persona and competitive research. 

• Ensure adoption and consistent usage of both Product Marketing Managers, as well as broader marketing team. 

Competencies  

• Strategic Skills.  Ability to accurately assess competitive strengths and vulnerabilities, to best align and move forward company objectives.  Able to make tactical and strategic adjustments to ensure success.  Must be able to see the big picture and translate to strategies and tactics.  Understands and recommends the right aspects of analysis to make judgement and strategy decisions. 

• Judgment / Decision Making.  Must be able to balance between quick decisiveness and more thorough approaches based on consistent logic, rationality and objectivity.  Shows common sense and anticipates consequences of decisions.  Uses data to inform, rationalize and adjust decisions. 

• Analytical Skills.  Can effectively analyze multiple data points to identify significant problems and opportunities.  Effective at getting to the root cause by probing with appropriate stakeholders. 

• Oral Communication.  Superior skills as demonstrated by ability to think on your feet, clarify organization of thought processes and easily articulate the product vision and standards.  Keeps many critical stakeholders informed. 

• Written Communication.  Outstanding ability to translate product features into relevant marketing and sales messages.  Knows how the market wants to receive information and can put into practice written/visual content that meets those needs. 

• Team Player.  Effectively collaborates across the organization, carries a strong voice to ensure goals are achieved, works to tear down walls to overcome we-they relationships, and remains approachable.  Can operate at a strategic level, providing leadership to direct and cross-functional contributors, but knows enough about the day-to-day execution to jump in on tactical delivery when needed. 

• Organization/Planning.  Ensures key priorities are aligned to organization goals and initiatives, effectively manages own time, and ensures support of others to deliver.  Anticipates risks and defines and executes contingencies.  Holds team accountable to deadlines and project requirements. 

• Adaptability.  Flexes to new pressures with ability to quickly adjust both strategic and tactical targets for self, and direct and extended team members.  Able to cope effectively with complexity.   

• Energy and Tenacity.  Exhibits high energy and a strong desire to achieve the goal.  Will be strategic and a “do-er” with a reputation for delivering results. 

• Leadership.  Possesses the ability to articulate a vision and motivate the team to coordinated action.  Understands how to balance empathy with expectation, and uses appropriate motivation and incentive to inspire confidence and contribution at the individual level. 

• Interpersonal skills.  Facilitates constructive dialogue and collaboration.  Knows how to navigate organizational complexity for productive outcomes.  Connects with all levels of the organization on a constructive way that inspires trust and confidence. 

Supervisory Responsibility  

This position manages some employees of the department and is responsible for the performance management and hiring of the employees within that department. 

Qualifications and Experience 

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Computer Science or directly related experience required. 

• 8+ years of product marketing experience preferably in SaaS or FinTech. 

• Strong planning and project management skills, with proven ability to oversee complex projects from origin to execution. 

• Exceptional collaboration abilities across cross-functional teams. 

• Strong sense of ownership, work ethic and self-motivation. 

• Experience in these additional marketing areas: Demand generation, email marketing, social media and branding. 

• Ability to prioritize and meet aggressive deadlines. 

• Previous experience in sales or working with enterprise sales teams. 

• Previous experience doing a deep competitive analysis.